Increased utilization of solar power is highly desirable as solar power is a readily available renewable resource with power potential far exceeding total global needs; and as solar power does not contribute to environment-damaging pollutants associated with fossil fuel power, such as unburned hydrocarbons, NOx and carbon dioxide. Solar powerplants produce no carbon dioxide that contributes as a greenhouse gas to global warming-in sharp contrast to fossil fuel powerplants such as coal, oil, or even natural gas powerplants. Limitations to the widespread deployment of solar power, either solar thermal power or solar photovoltaic power, have largely been a consequence of higher power cost per kilowatt-hour for traditional solar power systems as compared with fossil fuel power systems, driven in large part by the production and deployment costs of these solar power systems.
As an enabler for low cost solar power, it is of great importance to reduce the cost of heliostats, which are the devices that track the Sun's apparent motion and the single biggest cost component for central receiver or “power tower” utility-scale solar thermal powerplants. The idea of using inflatable heliostats, was proposed in the pioneering U.S. Pat. No. 5,404,868 entitled “Apparatus Using a Balloon Supported Reflective Surface for Reflecting Light from the Sun,” cited below as Reference 1; and was prototyped and proof-of-concept tested in Reference 2.